You see ads on TV all the time but I figure those are mostly if not entirely scams.
So if I’ve invented something ( and it’s not my business to do this sort of thing, I just did it in my garage) that I think is a marketable consumer product. What do I do now? Hiring a patent attorney is expensive, or so I’ve heard. Do I find a company producing something similar and approach them? Is there a trade show or convention where I could take a prototype with hopes to sell it/ the idea? How do I protect my idea, yet find an avenue of selling it?
Let’s assume that I have neither interest nor ability to mass produce it myself.
Thanks.
-rainy
Also, I’m posting a separate thread on a tangent topic, but don’t know how to link, so if you’ve gtot some input you may want to look it up as well.
You can try a “do-it-yourself” patent if you wish. There’s no law requiring that a patent attorney prepare the application. I’ve been through it twice. The first time, I was paying my own way, and it cost about $7,000 by the time all was said and done. The second time, I developed the concept for a consulting client, so he put the application in, and I don’t know what it cost. The application itself is pretty cheap.
Upon rereading my previous post, I see I wasn’t clear. I used an attorney both times. If I had done it myself, the cost would have been only a couple of hundred dollars.
You could try putting together a full patent application by yourself, but it will take a lot of time and it is definately not easy if you have no legal training. The cost for an individual to file such an application is currently $500 (with more due if the patent is finally granted 1-2 years down the road). Alternately, you could file what is called a “provisional” patent application. This application is not really examined in the same way a full application is, but it is filed and will be helpful to prove the date of invention if you have a dispute with someone. The provisional application currently costs $100 and you can probably do that yourself. It’s still work, but it is a lot simpler (and less legalese) than the regular application. If you do file a provisional application, you will have 12 months to file a full application (during this time you can legally use the phase “patent pending” for the device). This gives you time to shop things around and little bit and see if there is any commercial interest before paying for the full application (fees plus attorney costs). Check out the patent office website for more details.
You’re jumping the gun a bit, rainy… the smartest thing to do at present is to conduct your own preliminary patent research, to try to establish whether your idea is truly original or not. In the space of a couple hours or so, you can get a reasonable idea of whether your idea is really original, or not – and save yourself the few thousand bucks a patent attorney might charge you for the search. Don’t hesitate to ask a librarian for advice and help; these materials are unfamiliar to the vast majority of the public and I’m sure that librarians in patent libraries are very understanding of the public’s sense of bewilderment and confusion in searching through patent records.
Depending on your ability to cobble together whatever technical drawings and whatnot your patent application would require, it might still turn out to be necessary to hire a pro to draw up your application. But at least, by getting your feet wet in the library, you’ll have a much better idea of the kind of paperwork involved.
Here’s a list of the nation’s patent libraries, from the U.S. Patent Office website. Georgia has only one, on the Georgia Tech campus (sensibly enough).
I also recommend reading up on the process of getting a patent and developing, marketing, and selling one’s ideas. There must be a good book or two on just these subjects in a local library or bookstore. Even an an otherwise economically viable original idea may be unprofitable to develop and market if it could be easily copied (with slight variations or improvements) by the competition.
The lion’s share of the patent cost is research to see if the item in question is indeed new, unique, and sufficiently different from “prior art” as to warrant a new patent. The three that I co-hold cost us about 5K each, and we manufacture/install our widget. To come up with the necessary , we formed an S-Corp of a dozen folks.
My Dad struck a deal with his then-employer (he’s retired now) that they could use his widget in perpetuity at no cost, but they footed the bill for his patents, and he sells the art to other users.